NONPARTISAN COMMENTARY ON LATEST ELECTION PROBLEMS: Black Box Voting can provide insights for you about the latest news on election-related topics. You can find the latest news on elections problems here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/114. html

Following are the kinds of issues Black Box Voting can address:

Voting machine glitches:

- "The worst scenario you can imagine," officials reported in Clark County Indiana shortly after the polls closed in the May 2, 2006 election. Computerized voting system didn't work. Results were read to a woman who manually typed them in.

- June 2006, A Pottawattamie County, Iowa election official hand counted her ballots and was surprised to find a total entirely different than the results noted on the voting machines. The manufacturer, Election Systems & Software, admitted that it had programmed the machines incorrectly.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio's May 2, 2006 primary:- Machines were turned off and on many times by overwhelmed poll workers trying desperately to make them work; - Memory cards replaced midstream; paper trails that got thrown away - Voters who were told they were done when the machine was reading 'error'; - After the screen went blank, ballots without all the appropriate issues appeared in some precincts.

- Allamakee County, Iowa: 300 votes fed into the machine, 4 million votes came out (Nov. 2000; According to the Wall Street Journal, Nov. 17, 2000 "Fuzzy Numbers")

Lawsuits: Colorado voters filed a lawsuit to halt touch-screens, citing deficiencies in security, reliability, and verifiability in systems made by four manufacturers. (June 2, 2006; http://www.voteraction.org)

Voter databases What happens to your personal information once it enters the elections industry? The Denver Election Commission acknowledged that about 150,000 voter records had been missing at least since February, when it moved to a new office. Last week, the commission found about 87,000 of the records. The rest are still missing. (June 18, 2006; http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20 060618/ap_on_re_us/voter_records_missing)

Voter ID cards In Georgia, if you do not have a driver's license (or your name on a utility bill, bank account or paycheck) you may have difficulty voting due to new voter ID requirements. These kinds of requirements have been struck down by the courts in Georgia, but officials appealed the decision.

In New Mexico, newly required voter IDs arrived with hundreds of errors -- names spelled wrong, and in some cases the wrong addresses (which can result in wrong polling places, wrong candidates on ballot).

Vote fraud: Kentucky, May 2006: According to news reports, the state attorney general's office received over five-hundred complaints of voting fraud from 77 Kentucky counties from the May primary election. The Clay County Sheriff for 17 years said the problem wasn't that voters didn't know how to use machines, but that several precinct officials claim that they were bribed to change selections in the voting booth. http://www.wkyt.com/Global/story.asp?S=4997 119&nav=4CAL

Missing ballot boxes: The 74 Ballot boxes for computerized voting systems are called "memory cards" "cartridges" or "memory packs" depending on which manufacturer makes the machines.

- Detroit: Lost track of ballots in nine precincts -- or almost 3,000 votes -- in the Nov. 2005 election, and did not count them until two days after polls closed. Detroit Elections Department Director Gloria Williams insisted it was completely normal for poll workers to temporarily lose track of precinct results -- stored in computerized memory packs. (Detroit Free Press, Nov. 12, 2005; "Bungled Votes Probed")

Gerrymandering: Re-drawing district boundaries can be a tactic for manipulating elections. It's only supposed to happen with each 10-year census, but politicians find reasons to change things more often -- sometimes for political gain. For example, part of a new Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was thrown out by the courts in June 2006 because new boundaries failed to protect minority voting rights. (http://www.nbc11.com/politics/9438639/detail.html ) Black Box Voting is familiar with redistricting and gerrymandering issues and can provide lively and articulate nonpartisan commentary when such matters are in the news.

Campaign finance issues and lobbying - Diebold Lobbyist Donates $10,000 to Kenneth Blackwell; maximum-donor list also includes Mitch Given, who is a registered lobbyist for Diebold Election Systems, one of the vendors of voting machines for election boards in Ohio. Blackwell's office urged Diebold's selection as a vendor and negotiated the contract. (Blackwell was also found to own stock in Diebold). June 10, 2006 Associated Press)

Firm couldn?t test machines - >>>what state is this??? State investigating election glitch Employees of Election Systems & Software failed to successfully test whether Jackson County?s voting systems could merge their results. They tried but couldn?t get it done, Jackson County Clerk Sarah Benter said Thursday of ES&S employees. ?At first they thought it was that lightning affected our server, but that wasn?t a problem,? Benter said. ?He (an ES&S employee) decided he didn?t know enough about one of the systems to really test it. He assured me, though, they would work.? They didn?t. (BROWNSTOWN ? get cite)

Recount irregularities: After the 2004 presidential election, Cuyahoga County election workers secretly skirted rules on recount, a special prosecutor charges. Three county elections officials have been indicted, and Erie County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter says more indictments are possible. Black Box Voting investigator Kathleen Wynne captured county officials confession on videotape.

These sites and these "incidents" are just the tip of the iceberg of Election Fraud.